Slot machines are the primary revenue source of most casinos, with machines often earning between fifty and one hundred fifty dollars per day. Because of the profitability of such slot machine use, casinos have begun to market aggressively to both retain existing customers and attract new players—often by offering increasingly high jackpot payouts. Players find higher jackpots more exciting, and will seek out those casinos offering the best rates. Increasing the payouts, however, has a negative impact on the profitability of the machines. In order to maintain a reasonable profit margin for the house in the face of increasing jackpot amounts, casinos were forced to decrease the probability of hitting the top jackpots by reducing the ratio of winning symbols to losing symbols. Although reducing the number of jackpot symbols per reel achieved this end, slot machines were eventually left with very few jackpot symbols per reel. In order to further decrease the probability of hitting the top jackpot, slot machine manufacturers began to increase the number of stops per reel, allowing for less frequent jackpots. More reel stops, however, required physically larger reels and thus larger machines. These larger machines reduced the number of machines that could be fit onto the casino floor, reducing the casino win.
Virtual reel technology, such as the technology disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,448,419 of Telnaes, alleviated some of these problems by providing an electronic reel which operated in combination with the physical reel. Outcomes were determined by the internal electronic reel and then simply displayed by the physical reel. While the physical reel might contain two jackpot symbols and twenty non-jackpot symbols, the virtual reel might have one jackpot symbol and ninety-nine non-jackpot symbols. In this manner, the probability of the reel stopping on a particular symbol such as a lemon was completely determined by the relative frequency of the lemon on the virtual reel—not the physical reel. The benefit of this technology was that the slot machine could now have small physical reels while maintaining an electronic reel with far more reel stops, allowing low frequency of jackpot symbols to support high payouts. The player of such a machine, however, is completely unaware of the virtual reel and tends to assume that the physical reel determines the outcome. He might see an equal number of jackpot symbols and oranges, yet discover that the jackpot symbols “never seem to come up” while the oranges come up frequently. Such an imbalance often leads to the player concluding that the machine is “rigged” to not pay off.
In addition to the misleading probabilities described above, conventional slot machine reels also often fail to provide the player with a satisfying entertainment experience. After seeing the first two reels stop spinning and realizing that there are no longer any possible symbols on the third reel that result in a payout, players are discouraged. Watching the third reel spin is a waste of time when there is no way for a player to win.
Thus, it would be very desirable to provide a slot machine that offers players the ability to play a game of chance having a seemingly endless number of potential outcomes. Such a slot machine would retain a player's interest for longer periods of time, making the game more enjoyable.